My husband and I adopted our daughter "Sugar Cookie" from foster care in March 2007. I've learned that infertility is the best gift God could have given us, because it gave us our daughter. Cookie came to us at 2 days old, on December 22, 2005.
On July 31st, 2007 our daughter's sister "Bit-Bit" was born and placed with us. We finalized her adoption on October 3, 2008. While our home is now closed to further children, it remains a place for great stories!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Our tax return arrived in the mail yesterday. The powers- that- be decided the return was too large to be direct deposited and the letter we received from the powers-that-be stated they "had to do some additional calculations" (meaning we are likely going to be audited one day soon, but we are prepared for that). But, the reason for the large check was...

Our adoption in 2007. If it were a "regular" adoption,we would have been able to use the Adoption Tax Credit to cover some of our adoption expenses. But because we had no adoption expenses (adoption through foster care is free for the most part) - well, we did owe the lawyer a whopping $86 dollars when it was all said and done - we did not qualify.

But wait...

Our adoption was from foster care and it was of a child born severely drug addicted.

So that is why we are doing a lot of work now on the house. All lighting fixtures are being replaced and the entire interior re-painted. No new carpeting for now - we have 2 little ones and are not crazy.

But hubby deposited big fat check yesterday and the amounts will go away quickly once some major bills are paid off. But it feels awesome to know that we will owe far less now that we did a month ago. And it feels great to know that Cookie and Bit-Bit are going to want for nothing. They have a beautiful new pale yellow and white bedroom thanks to their grandfather. They have a gazillion new clothes thanks to grandmothers and aunties. And they have subsidies which will allow us to do things like swim lessons all summer long instead of just one session.

Bit-Bit's adoption which will take place later in 2008 will be special needs as well. She has a heart defect which could be left alone (a good % of the population has this defect), but will have to be monitored. It is also a possibility it could enlarge and the gap widen, at which point she would have to have surgery. This would not happen though until about age 7 - so we have a lot of cardiology appointments between now and then just to make sure she's still fine. She too was drug exposed, but not born with drugs in her system since biomom was incarcerated.

We are blessed our kids are so healthy. Bit-Bit has a double ear infection, but we praise God that we get to "celebrate" minor health issues like that as opposed to others we could have been facing had the outcome been different for our kid-os.

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comments:

You absolutely deserve that check! I had read about that in one of my fostering to adopt books! That is great! The things you are doing for your girls and the future opportunities they will have are wonderful!

We got that wonderful tax credit last year. It was the same year that I quit my job and took out my 401k to pay off debts so we could afford for me to stay home. The adoption credit cancelled out the large tax percentage that had been deducted! We still had to pay the penalty, but other than that we got all our taxes back.

How does that work? I heard that the tax credit is like 10k per child that you adopt--but my Brother-In-Law who is a CPA and worked in taxes said he would look into it for me. He came back and said-it is a "CREDIT" not a refund---so it can roll over for like a few yrs to lower your tax liability. But it is not like we would get a check back for $10,000...Or Do you? --Or do you change your exemptions or something?? I hope you do get a big check and I hope he is wrong!! let me know